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Spring 2002

Features

Nurses to the homeless :: Gypsy's camp is evidence of the harsh living conditions faced by a growing number of homeless in Spokane. It also doubles as a classroom, and a lesson in reality, for student nurses. By Andrea Vogt.

A campus full of wonders :: All over campus, curiosities emerged from closets to form one of the most popular and unusual shows ever to fill the art museum. By Tim Steury.

What don't we know? :: James Krueger wants to know why the average person will spend 219,000 hours asleep. By James Krueger and Tim Steury.

Memories are made of this :: Neuroscientists Jay Wright and Joe Harding can approximate Alzheimer's symptoms in a rat by injecting a certain protein into its hippocampus. What's more, they can reverse those symptoms. By Tim Steury.

Fiction

The Peking Cowboy :: He wanted to tell the story in the third person, but it came out in the first; he wanted to tell it in the past, but it came out happening in the now; even if he wanted to, he could not change a word of it, its sequence and language clarifying its own shape and direction in his voice. A short story by Alex Kuo.

Alumni president Ed Little: "I always wanted to work with children"

It’s been almost 30 years now, but Ed Little, president of the
Washington State University Alumni Association, remembers it like
yesterday.

A sophomore and a member of the Cougar Yell Team, he was in
Eugene, Oregon, for WSU’s 1974 football game with Oregon in Autzen
Stadium. Before the Cougars secured their 21-16 victory, Little
received an urgent message on the sideline.

His father, Gerald, had been seriously injured in an industrial
accident. Little was needed in Seattle. Athletic director Sam
Jankovich immediately had his wife, Patty, drive Little to the
Eugene airport. When they arrived, a ticket was waiting for the
next flight north. The following day, President Glenn Terrell
called Little’s mother at the hospital to inquire about Gerald’s
condition and to check on the rest of the family.

Gerald was superintendent of ordinance at Lockheed in Seattle.
He was working with a crew when he fell off a ladder, severely
damaging his back. Several disks had to be fused.

“During the operation,” Little says, “. . . his heart stopped,
causing all kinds of complications. It really was touch and go. He
had five surgeries.”

Little missed two weeks of school. The family savings were
“wiped out,” and he found himself at a crossroads. He could either
quit school, or he could apply for student loans and hope to find a
part-time job that would allow him to continue.

He decided to return to Pullman.

By then, the University had completed the paperwork Little
needed to receive student loans and arranged for him to work as a
houseboy at Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

“All my professors helped me get caught up. Not one pressured me
to get my work in immediately. They all knew my mind was still in
Seattle,” he says.

Gerald passed away in 2000. Little shares the story, he says,
because it illustrates the special concern WSU has for its
family.

“It was that definite face-to-face relationship we talk about at
Washington State University.”

• Ed Little is now in his 26th year as an educator in Vancouver and
his sixth as Alki Middle School principal. “I always wanted to work
with children,” he says. “What better way than in education?”

At Alki, he hopes to provide positive leadership, “where everyone can contribute within the organization.”

He
earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education in 1976 and 1980,
respectively. In May 2001, he will complete his superintendent’s
credentials and by 2005 a doctorate, again from WSU. That says
something about his commitment to education and to Washington State
University.

• When Little began teaching sixth grade in
Vancouver, education was “textbook oriented.” A quarter-century later,
computers and the Internet put knowledge at the student’s fingertips.
As a result, teachers have to “rethink” how they teach. They have to
ask, “What is important for our students to know now?”

“Students,
particularly those in middle school, want to be involved. If they
aren’t, they get bored quickly,” Little says. Hands-on activities are
popular. Rather than just learning about the Civil War, he says, some
Alki students “recreate parts of the battle.” Students can also take
“electronic field trips” to colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. From their
classrooms, they can ask questions of the people in the historic
community and receive answers via the Internet and television.

•
Ed Little prefers “being out in the building” to sitting in his office.
He tries to visit every classroom at least twice a week—whether for 30
seconds or 30 minutes--always unannounced. “I think my teachers and
students appreciate the visits,” he says. “They need to know me as a
person.”

The visits have additional benefits. He can quickly
sense the “feeling tone” of the classroom. How? By the way the teacher
addresses the students, and vice versa. And how students treat each
other.

“We don’t tolerate ‘put-downs,’ ” he says. “We want ‘put-ups. ”’

• Little has been a volunteer for WSU in some capacity for 24 years,
including 12 with the Southwest Washington Cougar Club. After serving
as president, he waited a year before becoming deputy director of the
Alumni Association in the Vancouver area.

As alumni president,
Little says he is looking at the goals President V. Lane Rawlins has
set, and he wants to align alumni resources to help the University
reach those goals.

“I want the University to be seen in a
positive light, as a quality, caring educational institution that truly
values the face-to-face contact in education,” Little says. “That
really is what Washington State University does best.”